CASSIDY'S RUN: The Secret Spy War Over Nerve Gas By David Wise Random House, 228 pages, $25 The best entry point to "Cassidy's Run" may be, of all places, one of the jacket blurbs. "Bag the novels," urges R. James Woolsey. "Read `Cassidy's Run."' Woolsey is a former director of the CIA. His approval means David Wise isn't making this stuff up. "This stuff" is a long-running counterspy operation by the FBI, an agency toward which former CIA directors tend to...

At the exit gate from the Army's Lexington-Blue Grass depot, a sign warns motorists that they are about to enter what the Army considers one of society's most dangerous areas: a civilian highway. A growing group of angry residents here, however, think it's the traffic entering the depot that should be warned. The cause of their concern lies among 902 grass-covered igloos on the depot's 15,000-acre rolling terrain. Four dozen igloos house 70,000 M-55 rockets containing deadly...

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Alexei Anishchuk AMMAN/LONDON, June 16 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin, arriving in Britain ahead of an international summit set to be dominated by disagreement over the U.S. decision to send weapons to Syria's rebels, said the West must not arm fighters who eat human flesh. In Syria, rebels fought back on Sunday against forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese Hezbollah allies near Aleppo, where...

Japan on Saturday marked the fourth anniversary of the deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system amid fears about a resurgence of the doomsday cult responsible. Victims of the gas attack, which killed 12 people and made 5,300 ill, submitted a petition to the government asking it to monitor the health and mental condition of those stricken in the incident and to keep a close eye on the Aum Shinri Kyo cult. The victims also pressed demands for full compensation, saying they had been...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. investigators reacted cautiously on Wednesday to France's announcement that laboratory tests proved that President Bashar al-Assad's forces had used nerve gas in Syria's civil war, saying it was vital to know the chain of custody of the samples. French officials said on Tuesday that their tests were the first to comply with international standards and prove that chemical weapons were used in Syria. Paris handed the results to the U.N....

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. investigators reacted cautiously on Wednesday to France's announcement that laboratory tests proved that President Bashar al-Assad's forces had used nerve gas in Syria's civil war, saying it was vital to know the chain of custody of the samples. French officials said on Tuesday that their tests were the first to comply with international standards and prove that chemical weapons were used in Syria. Paris handed the results to the U.N....

* Tokyo sarin attack provides hints for Syria investigation * Samples needed to prove use can fade within weeks * Western powers say evidence of use by Syria in mounting By Anthony Deutsch AMSTERDAM, May 15 (Reuters) - It took Tokyo police just three hours to confirm the use of sarin gas when members of a doomsday cult attacked five crowded subway cars in 1995, killing 13 people and sickening thousands of passengers. The same lethal nerve gas is now at...

The U.S. military used nerve gas on a mission to kill Americans who defected during the Vietnam War, CNN and Time Magazine said Sunday in a joint report. The so-called Operation Tailwind was approved by the Richard Nixon White House as well as the CIA, the report said, quoting retired Adm. Thomas Moorer, a Vietnam-era chief of naval operations and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former military officials who participated in the operation said their job was to kill defectors from...